Computer and communication technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computer and communication technologies are involved in many aspects of a person's day. For example, many devices being used today by consumers have a small computer incorporated within the device. These small computers come in varying sizes and degrees of sophistication. These small computers may vary in sophistication from one microcontroller to a fully-functional complete computer system. For example, small computers may be a one-chip computer, such as a microcontroller, a one-board type of computer, such as a controller, a typical desktop computer, such as an IBM-PC compatible, etc.
Printers are used with computers to print various kinds of items including letters, documents, pictures, etc. Many different kinds of printers are commercially available. Ink jet printers and laser printers are fairly common among computer users. Ink jet printers propel droplets of ink directly onto the paper. Laser printers use a laser beam to print.
Printers are a type of imaging device. Imaging devices include, but are not limited to, physical printers, multi-functional peripherals, a printer pool, a printer cluster, a fax machine, a plotter, a scanner, a logical device, an electronic whiteboard, a tablet PC, a computer monitor, a file, etc.
Different kinds of computer software facilitate the use of imaging devices. The computer or computing device that will be used to print the materials typically has one or more pieces of software running on the computer that enable it to send the necessary information to the printer to enable printing of the materials. If the computer or computing device is on a computer network there may be one or more pieces of software running on one or more computers on the computer network that facilitate printing.
When a document is desired to be printed, the document is either in a printer ready format or needs to be converted into a printer ready format that is compatible with the printer. Once the document is in a printer ready format (i.e., print job), the print job can be either pushed to the printer or pulled by the printer. In some computing environments it would be desirable to pull print the document from the printer where the rendering is initiated at the printer. Benefits may be realized by providing increased functionality to pull printing systems and methods.
A user may also choose to use the printer as a facsimile device, such as in a multi-functional peripheral (MFP), where rendering into a hardcopy or viewable softcopy output is deferred by transmitting the document to be printed to another destination device in a printer or fax ready format.